I love Europe, but resent having to subsidise a bunch of corrupt free-loaders running – very badly – a system that makes no economic sense at all.
I just took a week off in the Algarve, where I have been going since 1971.
I started going there because of one of my early direct mail successes. The chairman of Costain’s the builders had the idea of building some villas round a golf course in a place call Vale de Lobo.
Then they found they couldn’t sell them despite a significant national advertising campaign.
I was dragged in as part-time creative director of the new direct response unit at a big ad agency called Erwin Wasey. It must have been one of earliest attempts at a direct marketing agency in tis country. The rest of the time I was a creative director at the agency itself.
I wrote a long direct mail letter inviting rich people to come and see a film about the villas. They sold more in a week than they had in the previous year. The credit was by no means all mine though: one of my colleagues had managed to get hold of a very good mailing list of rich people. That made all the difference.
The Algarve has changed a lot. In those days you could get sardines and chips with a glass or two of wine for about £1. Now the prices are about the same as London. That means ludicrous.
But today Europe itself is ludicrous. Asinine employment laws discourage hiring because once you hire people it’s almost impossible to fire them. A friend in Italy has been working for 5 years for one major broadcasting organisation on a “contract” – even though he works full-time.
That sort of stupidity is enough to kill growth on its own. But there’s more.
They are busy planning a new £280 million parliament building in Brussels just as the whole thing is haemorrhaging money. They have one there already, plus a spare in Strasbourg for no sane reason I can conceive.
The second-raters who sit in the parliament engage in the sort of sharp practice that would had Al Capone blushing for shame.The finances of the “community” are such a crock of shit that the accounts have never been passed.
When a brave woman spoke up about it all she was fired – I believe when the reptilian Welsh windbag Kinnock was in charge. No British – nor any other – politician has had the courage simply to say “enough: we will not pass the accounts”.
Other better-qualified people have pointed out that the whole concept is as flawed as yoking together six sheep, four elephants, a giraffe, three chickens, four geese and a pair of tortoise to pull a stage coach.
I resent my taxes being used to subsidise this inane farce.
Absolutely spot-on, Drayton.
One area of “haemorrhaging” that really gets my goat is the total waste of money spent in the EU (and the UN) on translating and interpreting (itself an interesting word). Far better to encourage everyone to use their own language for discussions within their own community and a neutral bridge language for dealings at an international level. This would level the playing field, instead of playing into the hands of hegemonistic politicos (and the fat cat bankers pulling their strings).
There is only one serious candidate for this role – Esperanto.
Although many people write Esperanto off as some kind of “crank idea for idealistic weirdos”, I have direct experience of this inter-language at work. Before knocking it or dismissing it, people should give it a serious try. It takes hardly any time at all to learn to an acceptable level, and invariably brings a sense of satisfaction to the underdog.
Europe going nowhere –
Drayton, Don’t get me going!
“But, we get/deserve the -governemnt/service/bankers/politicians/fill-in-blank- that we put up with”.
I got told the line above a long time ago, when I was whinging about something or other, (I was in Oz at the time, where they pull you up quick for whinging!).
“What do you mean?” I asked.
“Well, if you feel so bloody strongly about it – do something, yer whingin’ bastard! – that’s the trouble – everyone whinges, but collectively, we’re all too lazy to do anything to correct it”.
And you know what? He was right. We all complain, but we don’t take action. What you, me and a few hundred other “annoyed citizens” should do, is stop whinging, form some sort of “collective of independents”, and stand for office.
I keep threatening to, but keep putting it off. Maybe with web technology, it would be easier to build a movement to fix it?
But at some level – all of us – have to stand up and be counted.
That farce is convenient to many powerfull/insanely rich people.
Now they are destroying what’s left whith the cure…
http://blogs.hbr.org/cs/2012/07/why_financial_discipline_wont.html
In reply to the apposite comment by Mr Carter may I add that Esperanto is more widespread than people imagine. It is now in the top 100 languages, out of 6,800 worldwide. It is the 29th most used language in Wikipedia, ahead of Danish and Arabic. It is a language choice of, Skype, Firefox, Ubuntu and Facebook and Google translate recently added this international language to its prestigious list of 64 languages.
Native Esperanto speakers, (people who have used the language from birth), include World Chess Champion Susan Polger, Ulrich Brandenberg the new German Ambassador to and Nobel Laureate Daniel Bovet. Financier George Soros learnt Esperanto as a child.
Esperanto is a living language – see http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-8837438938991452670
Their online course http://www.lernu.net has 125 000 hits per day and Esperanto Wikipedia enjoys 400 000 hits per day. That can’t be bad 🙂
Spot on .. waste, waste waste… Muppets all of them!
Time the UK left the Euro Zone and founded a new Anglo/American zone with the USA, Canada, Oz and other English speaking countries. I love spending time in France, Spain and Portugal but the Euro zone is living in fantasy land! You can’t fire anyone, they want six week vacation, retirement at 60, healthcare for all …… A some point you have to be compete in a world market.